Everything, as it turns out. When Amanda is knocked off her skateboard by a rare all-blue peacock, she learns that the species harbors a vital secret she must race to uncover. But before she can unravel the mystery, a startling archaeological discovery turns all of Britain against the detectives and threatens their very existence.

As old enemies gather strength and new adversaries emerge, Amanda finds herself dealing with hysterical teachers, a disappearing mentor, a mysterious poisoner, and a would-be magician. With so much at stake and so little time, the last thing she needs is to fall in love.

You can find Amanda Lester and the Blue Peacocksâ€™ Secret on Goodreads

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On Monday Amanda and her
friends had their first class with the new logic teacher. It was a
scary affair. The pirate was rude, strict, and humorless, and now he
smelled like cigars. Probably drank grog too, by the look of him,
Amanda thought, whatever that was.

The
first thing Professor Darktower said, in a really loud voice, was,
“Alice in Wonderland is not fun!” No introduction, no “Good
morning,” nothing. The statement was so abrupt and the message so
out of any context that every kid in the class dropped something,
gasped, choked, or bit their tongue, even if they weren’t chewing.
Then he said, “In this class we will read nothing but Lewis
Carroll—Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland,
Through
the Looking Glass,
the whole shebang. These publications are no laughing matter. You
think Tweedledum and Tweedledee are funny? The Mad Hatter is a joke?
Alice is cute? BALDERDASH!”

This
extremely loud exclamation caused poor Dreidel to fall off his chair
and twist his knee. But Professor Darktower would not let him go to
the nurse. “Detectives are not sissies,” he said. “You will
stay here and learn to be absolutely, impeccably logical. Got that?”

The
boy nodded up and down and attempted to hide his pain. It was obvious
that he was hurt, though, because he kept grimacing every time he
tried to move his leg. Amanda was so outraged that she refused to
keep quiet. “He’s hurt. He needs medical attention.”

The
huge man fixed her with a stony stare and said, “Then he’s out of
my class. Do you think, missy, that when you’re out battling the
likes of Blixus Moriarty you can take a time out and go to the nurse?
Now stop acting like a girl and be a detective. And as for you,
laddie, one more sissy incident like this and you’re out of my
class. Got that?”

Dreidel
nodded again but Amanda was furious. She opened her mouth to protest,
but Ivy tugged on her sleeve and gave her a low “Uh uh,” and she
realized that her revenge would have to wait. But revenge she would
have, and it would be a doozy. The man was worse than a boor. Why, he
was even ruder than an arch-criminal. Even Blixus had never been as
bad as that. She wondered what Professor Darktower’s parents must
be like to produce a son like him.

There
was something she could do right then and there, however. She reached
into her bag and surreptitiously texted Dreidel: “R U OK?” “Y,”
the response came almost immediately. Of course he would say that.
Dreidel was a trouper. And then it hit her that he hadn’t gone off
to Skye after all. She was glad, not just because he’d stayed to
support Legatum, but because he was a good guy and a great lab
partner. She texted back a smiley and let it go for the time being.

Darktower
glared at the class and said, “As I was saying, there are equations
and syllogisms in these volumes that underlie every word, and we’re
going to find them. You
will
be responsible for finding them. Then, for your term paper, you will
be expected to arrange them in a different way that’s still
logically valid and write the text they would produce. Is that clear?
I repeat: this task is not humorous or fanciful. It is deadly serious
work, and you won’t be able to build ironclad cases unless you can
master it.”

The
man made about as much sense as that strange page Amanda had found.
Sometimes it was hard to understand Professor Ducey, but not like
this. What did he mean, equations and syllogisms underlie every word?
It sounded like he was saying that the books had been translated into
English from math. You could read an equation out loud, of course,
and you could translate it into Spanish or Chinese, but how could
you—OMG. This was storytelling, just like the way she and Holmes
had done when they’d put together the training film about a
cyberforensics problem, except with math rather than words.

She
glanced over at Holmes and found him looking at her and smiling. He’d
got it too. He gave her a quick wink and then everything exploded.

“MR.
Holmes!” bellowed the teacher. “Out, NOW!” Holmes looked
astonished, then got up and walked out of the room. “MISS Lester!”
the teacher continued. Amanda was surprised. “Oh, you thought I
didn’t know who you were,” the man said. “I want you to take
your things, find Mr. Holmes, and wait in my office. Is that clear?”

“But—”
Amanda said.

“OUT!”
he roared.

Amanda
felt the strongest urge to stick her tongue out at him again, but she
managed to control herself and abstained. She picked up her bag and
followed Holmes out into the hall.

“What
in the world was that?” he said when she’d caught up with him. He
looked confused, as if he didn’t know quite what to do with
himself.

“The
man is a lunatic,” said Amanda. “He wants us to go to his
office.”

“But
the class just started,” said Holmes. “It will be fifty minutes.”
Gosh, he looked good. His eyes seemed to be on fire. She looked away
for a second.

“All
I know is that’s what he said.”

He
shook his head but he was smiling. “You know, the dumb thing is
that up until he had his little meltdown, he was making sense.”

“You
got that too?” she said, matching his grin.

“Of
course. You taught me.”

“I
did, didn’t I?” she said. She felt absolutely triumphant. It was
a wonderful feeling after that ridiculous scene in the classroom.
“Who needs him?”

“I
guess we do,” said Holmes. “If we want to stay here.”

“You’re
not thinking of going to Skye?” she said.

“Never.
Not even for Professor Ducey.”

And
then, instead of worrying or fuming or plotting revenge, the two of
them cracked up so hard they had to hold their stomachs.

When
they calmed down enough to speak, Holmes looked at her with mischief
in his eyes and said, “You know what this means, don’t you?”

She
threw back her head and laughed. “We have forty-five minutes to do
whatever we want.”

“Come
on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Amanda
Lester and the Blue Peacocks’ Secretpeacock
poop in the lab excerpt:

“Obviously we have to
look at the page under the microscope,” Amanda said a few moments
later. “That should be easy.”

She
took the paper over to the nearest microscope and stuck it into the
viewing area. Then she fitted her eye to the eyepiece and, “Whoa! I
can see the fibers. They look like spaghetti that’s been cooked
about a minute—really hard and straight. Here, take a look.”

Clive
edged over and looked into the eyepiece. “You’re right. There’s
something plastic about them.”

“Do
you suppose there’s a plastic coating?” she said.

“Let’s
see,” said Clive. He raced over to one of the many bookcases in the
room and scanned the titles. “This one looks good,” he said,
pulling out a gigantic green volume and placing it on a bench. He
opened the book to the index, skimmed a couple of pages, and flipped
to a bunch of pictures somewhere in the middle.

Amanda
came over and looked at the book. “Hm, those pictures don’t look
anything like what we’re seeing. Those fibers are natural and they
look less regular than our page. All ours look the same.”

“Yep,”
said Clive. “I think ours is plastic.
Was there such a thing as plastic back when the Bible
was created, though?”

“Let’s
find out,” said Amanda.

She
did a quick lookup on her phone and said, “Apparently Celluloid was
invented back in the 1840s. It was patented in 1869
and 70 by some guy named John Wesley Hyatt. It’s a
camphor-modified cellulose nitrate. They made billiard balls out
of it. Film too. Ha! This is interesting. There was a big legal fight
over who the true inventor was.”

“Could
we be looking at Celluloid then?” said Clive. “The book was
created about the time the school was, in 1887. That’s late
enough.”

“Hm,”
said Amanda, “I don’t think so. It says here that Celluloid is
flammable. Our Bible is
supposed to be virtually indestructible.”

“What
do you mean ‘virtually indestructible’?’ said Clive.

Oops.
Amanda hadn’t told anyone what Professor Also had divulged during
the summer—that it was almost impossible to destroy the book. She
had said something about it being vulnerable to explosion, though, or
was it fire?

“Oh,
uh, well, Professor Also kind of told me that it was,” she said. No
sense in lying. Anyway, what was the big deal? Everyone knew about
the book now.

“Awesome!”
said Clive. “So that means it’s intact somewhere. And based on
the fact that you found this page, I’d venture to say that Moriarty
doesn’t have it after all.”

He
had a point. There was a lot of reason for hope now. Amanda wished
she could tell Thrillkill. He’d be so pleased.

“Of
course the question now is, why are the peacocks so attracted to it?”
said Clive. “Do they eat plastic or something? Whoa, I’ve got the
most amazing idea.” He grinned at her wide, then wider, then still
wider.

Amanda
couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. Surely he wasn’t going to
propose that they feed the peacocks a bit of the page. That would be
a terrible idea for all sorts of reasons. What else could he be
thinking? And then it hit her.

“No!”
she said, diving into the rubbish to find that piece of poop she’d
pulled out of her hair. Where was it now? Rummage,
rummage,
crinkle.
“Ta da!” She held up the discarded poop in triumph. No sooner had
she done that than Binnie walked in again.

“Eeeew,”
she said. “What are you two doing? Is that feces?”

“Uh
. . .” said Clive.

It
took Amanda about a split second to realize that this was a great
opportunity.

“Binnie!”
she said enthusiastically. “You’re just in time. We’re about to
do an important experiment and we could use a helper. Are you up for
it?”

This
didn’t seem to be what Binnie had expected when she’d entered the
room because she looked at Amanda, then Clive, then hesitated, then
said, “Well, I, uh . . .” then looked at Clive again and said,
“Uh, sure.”

“Wonderful,”
said Amanda. “We need to analyze this peacock poop.”

Binnie
grimaced, then looked at Clive again and said, “Okaaay. Uh, what do
you want me to do?”

“Well,
we were thinking—” said Amanda, but Clive could take no more of
it.

“We
need someone to document our experiment,” he said generously.

“Oh,
that,” said Binnie. “Of course. What do you need?” She looked
immensely relieved.

“Here,”
said Amanda, handing Binnie her camera. “If you could just record
us, that would be great.”

Binnie
took the camera and flashed a grin at Clive, who smiled shyly. Then,
seemingly realizing that she’d forgotten something, she smiled at
Amanda too. “Glad to,” she said. The girl was so obvious.

Amanda
Lester and the Blue Peacocks’ SecretSilver
Dirk excerpt:

And then the moment came.
The crew had broken through the tunnel wall and there was indeed
empty space on the other side. As head of the dig Liam got to be the
first to look inside.

Normally
academics tend to be cautious, and Liam never liked to get ahead of
himself. But in this instance he was visibly excited and moved
quickly. Amanda could see that he was breathing faster than usual and
trying to suppress a grin. The way he was clamping his mouth shut
made him look like he was sucking on a lemon. Of course it didn’t
help that Twinkle kept hovering in a very Lila sort of way,
attempting to give him advice that he didn’t need and could not
possibly want. “Don’t you think this light would be better?”
“You should really cover your nose and mouth in case there’s
something noxious inside.” “Be sure to remember your first
impression because that will make your article much more exciting.”
Amanda thought she’d lose her lunch and stuffed a gingersnap into
her mouth.

But Liam was nothing
if not gracious. He simply smiled at Twinkle, said “Thank you,”
and, mouth covered as procedure dictated, approached the opening. He
turned on his light and was just about to shine it into the space
when Amanda cried out.

“There it is. A
huge red spider. Did you see that?”

Liam was so
surprised that he dropped his light on his foot. “Ow!”

“Professor, are
you all right?” screamed Twinkle. The screech caused Ivy to shriek,
Nigel to bark, the archaeologists to rush to Liam’s side, Elbow
Marconi and his crew to scamper to the opening and block it, Simon
and Clive to bash into them, and Amanda to fall on her coccyx. The
confusion and panic grew so swiftly that soon the only person who
hadn’t run into about five other people was Darius, who just stood
there with his camera on his shoulder capturing the entire incident.

Then Amanda saw it
again—a blur of red whooshing past at breakneck speed.

“Simon!” she
screamed. “There!”

Simon wrenched his
neck around, mouthed “Ow,” and seemed to miss the spider entirely
because he said, “What?”

“The spider!”
Amanda yelled. “It was right there.” She pointed to a spot a few
feet from where Simon was standing.

“I didn’t see
it,” he said. “Clive, did you see anything?”

“Nope,” said
Clive.

“What is wrong
with all of you?” shouted Twinkle. “Can’t you see that the
professor is hurt?”

“I’m not hurt,”
said Liam. “I was just a bit startled.”

“Your foot,”
said Twinkle. “You’re limping.”

“It’s just a
muscle spasm,” said Liam. He flexed his foot and didn’t grimace
at all. “Now, shall we get on with things?”

Everyone moved away
(Amanda had to get up first, which was no easy task. Her butt hurt
like crazy.), and Liam raised his light to the opening again. Amanda
took her place next to Ivy, who had moved closer again, and
whispered, “I saw it. It was a huge red spider.”

“I believe you,”
said Ivy.

Liam peered into the
hole, moving the light this way and that.

“See anything,
Professor?” said Twinkle needlessly.

“Sh,” hissed
Felix.

“You sh,” said
Twinkle.

“Both of you sh,”
said Liam. He stuck his head into the opening so that both head and
light were on the other side and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we
have a hidden room!”

The tunnel erupted
in claps loud enough to bring down the ceiling, except that they
didn’t.

Darius moved in as
close as he could without getting in Liam’s way. He winked at
Amanda. She smiled.

“What do you see,
Dad?” said Ivy.

Everyone stopped
yelling.

“Well, um, uh,
dirt,” said Liam.

“What color?”
said Twinkle.

“How much?” said
Louie.

“I’ll get a
brush,” said Felix.

“Hold your horses,
all of you,” said Liam. “Procedure, remember?” He snapped his
fingers. The chamber was still.

Then Twinkle
whispered loudly, “I’ll get the log.”

Louie said, “I’ve
got the camera.”

“Tape measure,”
said Felix.

“That’s what I
like to see,” said Liam. “Mr. Marconi,” he nodded to Elbow.
“Gentlemen,” to the construction crew. “Thank you for your
excellent work, as usual.” Elbow and his men nodded back. “Take a
gander?”

The construction
crew approached the opening shyly, which made quite a contrast with
their earlier bumptiousness. From the back they looked almost
reverent.

“What’s that
over there?” said Elbow loudly, after he had stuck his head through
the opening.

“What are you
referring to?” said Liam.

“I see something
silver,” said Elbow.

“A coin, perhaps?”
said Liam.

“I don’t think
so,” said Elbow. “It’s pointy.”

“May I?” said
Liam, taking Elbow’s place. Twinkle passed him a spotlight and he
held it high, then lowered it and shined it this way and that.

About the Author:
Paula Berinstein is nothing like Amanda. For one thing, she's crazy about Sherlock Holmes. For another, she's never wanted to be a filmmaker. In addition, compared to Amanda she's a big chicken! And she wouldn't mind going to a secret school at all. In fact, she's hoping that some day she'll get to build one.

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